4 Dana Gioia Quotes on Nature

Dana Gioia quotes on nature

4. Twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush, scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly to find an unexpected waterfall, not half a mile from the nearest road, a spot so hard to reach that no one comes - a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies and nesting jays, a sign that there is still one piece of property that won't be owned.

5. Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper - metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

9. 'We lived in places that we never knew. We could not name the birds perched on our sill, Or see the trees we cut down for our view. What we possessed we always chose to kill. 'We claimed the earth but did not hear her claim, And when we died, they laid us on her breast, But she refuses us - until we earn Forgiveness from the lives we dispossessed.'

10. 'Teach us the names of what we have destroyed.'